En Route Part 47

The conviction that no trickery was possible to him at Paris brought him to the ground. He wandered from cell to chapel, from chapel to woods, awaiting the dinner hour with impatience, in order to be able to speak to someone, for in his disorder a new need arose. For more than a week he had spent the whole afternoon without opening his lips; he did not suffer from it, was even satisfied with his silence, but since he was pressed by this idea of departure he could not keep silence any longer, thought aloud in the walks to a.s.suage the sensations of his swelling heart, that stifled him.

M. Bruno was too sagacious not to guess the uneasiness of his companion, who became by turns taciturn and over talkative during the meal. He made, however, as though he saw nothing, but after he had said grace he disappeared, and Durtal, who was strolling near the great pond, was surprised to see him coming in his direction with Father Etienne.

They greeted him, and the Trappist with a smile proposed to him, if he had made no other plan, to pa.s.s his time in visiting the convent, and especially the library, which the Father prior would be delighted to show him.

"If convenient to me! I shall be delighted!" cried Durtal.

All three returned towards the abbey; the monk lifted the latch of a little door fas.h.i.+oned in a wall near the church, and Durtal entered a minute cemetery, planted with wooden crosses on gra.s.s graves.

There was no inscription, no flower in this enclosure which they traversed; the monk pushed another door, which opened on a long corridor smelling of rats. At the end of this gallery, Durtal recognized the staircase he had ascended one morning for his confession in the prior's room. They left it on their right, turned into another gallery, and the guest-master led them into an immense hall, pierced by high windows, decorated with eighteenth century pier-gla.s.ses, and _grisailles_; it was furnished only with benches and stalls, above which was a single chair sculptured and painted with abbatial arms, which marked the place of Dom Anselm.

"Oh! this chapter-house has nothing monastic," said Father Etienne, designating the profane pictures on the walls; "we have kept just as it was the drawing-room of this old chateau, but I beg you to believe that this decoration hardly pleases us."

"And what takes place in this hall?"

"Well, we meet here after ma.s.s; the chapter opens by reading the martyrology, followed by the concluding prayers of Prime. Then we read a pa.s.sage from the rule, and the Father abbot comments on it. Lastly, we practise the exercise of humility, that is to say, that whoever among us has committed any fault against the rule, prostrates himself, and avows it before his brethren."

They went thence to the refectory. This room had also a high ceiling, but was smaller, and garnished with tables in form of a horse-shoe. A kind of large cruets, each containing two half-bottles of wine and water, separated by a water bottle, and before them, instead of gla.s.ses, cups of brown earthenware, with two handles, were placed at equal distances. The monk explained that these sham cruets with three branches indicated the place of two covers, each monk having a right to his half bottle of drink, and partaking with his neighbour the water in the bottle.

"This pulpit," said Father Etienne, pointing out a large wooden box fixed against the wall, "is destined for the reader of the week, the father who reads during the meal."

"How long does the meal last?"

"Just half an hour."

"Yes; and the cookery which we eat is delicate in comparison with that which is served to the monks," said the oblate.

"I should lie if I were to affirm that we make good cheer," answered the guest-master. "Do you know that the hardest thing to bear, in the earlier time especially, is the want of seasoning in our dishes. Pepper and spices are forbidden by our rule, and as no salt-cellar has place on our table, we swallow our food just as it is, and it is for the most part scarcely salted.

"On certain days in summer, when one sweats in big drops, this becomes almost impossible, the gorge rises. Yet one must begin upon this warm paste, and at least swallow a sufficient quant.i.ty not to give out before the next day; we look at each other discouraged, unable to get any further; there is not another word to define our dinner in the month of August, it is a punishment."

"And all, the Father abbot, the prior, the fathers, the brethren, have the same food?"

"All. Now come and see the dormitory."

They ascended to the first floor. An immense corridor, furnished like a stable with wooden boxes, extended before them, closed at each end by a door.

"This is our lodging," said the monk, as he stopped before one of these cases. Cards were placed on them, affixing the name of each monk, and the first bore a ticket with this inscription: "The Father Abbot."

Durtal felt the bed against one of the two walls.

It was as rough as a carding comb, and as biting as a file. It was composed of a simple quilted pailla.s.se extended on a plank; no sheets, but a prison coverlet of grey wool, a sack of straw instead of pillows.

"G.o.d! it is very hard," said Durtal, and the monk laughed.

"Our habits soften the roughness of this straw mattress," he said; "for our rule does not allow us to undress, we may only take off our shoes, therefore we sleep entirely clad, our head wrapped in our hood."

"And it must be cold in this corridor swept by all the winds," added Durtal.

"No doubt the winter is rough here, but it is not that season which alarms us; we live pretty well, even without fire in time of frost, but the summer--! If you knew what it is to wake in habits still steeped in sweat, not dried since the evening before, it is terrible!

"Then, though because of the great heat we have often hardly slept, we must before dawn jump out of bed, and begin at once the great night office, the Vigils, which last at least two hours. Even after twenty years of Trappist life, one cannot but suffer at that getting up; in chapel you fight against sleep which crushes you, you sleep while you hear a verse chanted, you strive to keep awake, in order to be able to chant another, and fall asleep again.

"One ought to be able to turn the key on thought, and one is incapable of it.

"Truly, I a.s.sure you that even beyond the corporal fatigue which explains that state in the morning, there is then an aggression of the demon, an incessant temptation to make us recite the office badly."

"And you all undergo this strife?"

"All; and this does not hinder," concluded the monk, whose face was radiant, "this does not hinder us from being very happy here.

"Because all these trials are nothing beside the deep and intimate joys which our good G.o.d gives us. Ah! He is a generous Master; he pays us a hundred-fold for our poor sorrows."

As they spoke, they had pa.s.sed through the corridor and had arrived at its other end.

The monk opened the door, and Durtal was astounded to find himself in a vestibule just opposite his own cell.

"I did not think," he said, "that I was living so near you."

"This house is a regular labyrinth--but M. Bruno will take you to the library where the Father prior is waiting for you; for I must go to my business. We shall meet presently," he said, with a smile.

The library was situated on the other side of the staircase by which Durtal reached his chamber. It was large, furnished with shelves from top to bottom, occupied in the middle by a sort of counter table on which also were spread rows of books.

Father Maximin said to Durtal,

"We are not very rich, but at any rate we possess tools for work fairly complete on theology and the monography of the cloisters."

"You have superb volumes," cried Durtal, who looked at magnificent folios in splendid bindings with armorial bearings.

"Wait; here are the works of Saint Bernard in a fine edition," and the monk presented to Durtal enormous volumes, printed in heavy letters on crackling paper.

"When I think that I promised myself to make acquaintance with Saint Bernard in this very abbey which he founded, and here I am on the eve of my departure, and have read nothing!"

"You do not know his works?"

"Yes; scattered fragments of his sermons and of his letters. I have run through some _selectae mediocres_ of his works, but that is all."

"He is our chief master here; but he is not the only one of our ancestors in Saint Benedict whom the convent possesses," said the monk with a certain pride. "See," and he pointed out on the shelves some heavy folios, "here: 'Saint Gregory the Great,' 'Venerable Bede,' 'Saint Peter Damian,' 'Saint Anselm.' ... And your friends are there," he said, following Durtal with a glance as he read the t.i.tles of the volumes, "'Saint Teresa,' 'Saint John of the Cross,' 'Saint Magdalen of Pazzi,'

'Saint Angela,' 'Tauler,' ... and she who like Sister Emmerich dictated her conversations with Jesus during her ecstasy." And the prior took from the range of books in octavo, "The Dialogues of Saint Catherine of Siena."

"That Dominican nun is terrible for the priests of her time," the monk went on. "She insists on their misdeeds, reproaches them roundly with selling the Holy Spirit, with practising sortilege, and with using the Sacrament to compose evil charms."

"And there are besides the disorderly vices of which she accuses them in the series concerning the sin of the flesh," added the oblate.

"Certainly, she does not mince her words, but she had the right to take up that tone, and menace in the name of the Lord, for she was truly inspired by Him. Her doctrine was drawn from divine sources. 'Doctrina ejus infusa non acquisita,' says the Church in the bull of her canonization. Her Dialogues are admirable; the pages in which G.o.d exposes the holy frauds which He sometimes uses to recall men to good, the pa.s.sages in which she treats of the monastic life, of that barque which possesses three ropes: chast.i.ty, obedience, and poverty, and which faces the tempest under the conduct of the Holy Spirit, are delightful.

She reveals herself in her work the pupil of the well-beloved disciple and of Saint Thomas Aquinas. One might believe that one heard the Angel of the School paraphrasing the last of the Evangelists."

"Yes," said the oblate, striking in, "if Saint Catherine of Siena does not give herself to the high speculations of Mysticism; if she does not a.n.a.lyze like Saint Teresa the mysteries of divine love, nor trace the itinerary of souls destined to the perfect life, she reflects directly at least the conversations of Heaven. She calls, she loves! You have read, sir, her treatises on Discretion and Prayer?"